Legislation & Statutory Interpretation

• Semester: Fall 2020
• Course ID: 396K
• Credit Hours: 3
• Unique: 28331

Description

This course will be taught entirely online via Zoom.

The course focuses on the creation of legislation and then the subsequent statutory interpretation. It will discuss how the legislature exercises its power, what gives legislators their motivations, as well as different theories of interpretation. It will look at these issues from constitutional, statutory, and policy points of view. Goals of the class include understanding how proposed legislation becomes law, what U.S. Constitutional law provides about the legislative process, understanding how legistures operate, and learning skills about how to handle statutory language in practice - both on how legislatures create a statute and subsequently when courts must interpret that statute.